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Queer Arab Experience

FULL WORDS QUEER POC/ARAB PROJECT.

@antonss123 - There's no better time to be QTIPOC than it is to be RIGHT NOW. I am so proud and honoured to be a part of such a beautiful, free-spirited and loving community. I found my family away from family and I couldn't be any more content. I perform in these spaces and make it very clear that I am proud to be who I am and the message spreads across to everybody to believe in themselves and love themselves. If you ever feel that you are segregated; then DO MORE. SHOW YOUR CULTURE AND DONT BE AFRAID TO EXPRESS IT ANY WAY YOU WANT. There is no RIGHT or WRONG ; so just DO. 🌈🌹🦋

@nessuhifa - As soon as I understood the role I played in my life, I started spending the rest of my  childhood and teen years, feeling cheated and angry for being 'chosen' as someone who is to live their entire life as a Gay and Black person, with a Muslim family. I very quickly as a child understood that the media I consumed, the society I lived in and the religious texts I read in the Mosque, all were telling me in different ways, that it's not ok to be who I am and in some cases told me, that it's not possible to be who I am (Which is low key mad, cos I'm literally right here...) It took years of self-doubt and self-hatred, for me to realise I could not continue living with this anger at the world and at myself and that it was slowly only killing me

So I changed, not my sexuality or race (bcos that's literally impossible...) but, I changed my outlook, I finally got to a place in my life where everything that defined me wasn't a negative factor in my life, that I could use these things to connect to the world better, that I was actually lucky that I was given these factors. I had to shut out and stop listening to all these mortals, telling other mortals how to live their own life, in order for me to find some peace in the chaos I was born in. In other words, I had to look inside myself, like my oldest friend and just trust the voice within- Yes, I'm ending this with Christina Aguilera lyrics because she truly made some points in that song.

@bilmian - Queer identity has always existed amongst the ummah, yet we allow unnecessary hatred towards a community who were created in God’s own divine vision. Being both muslim and queer has always been challenging growing up, battling with my inner demons whilst also trying to keep up with standards set for me before birth, gaining this balance of both peace and love was something I achieved in my early 20’s realising that God loves me for who I am, even if I am looked down upon by other so called muslims. I find it funny how being homosexual is haram yet people act like being homophobic isn’t, nowhere is the Qur’an does God preach about being hateful or phobic towards another minority. In fact the meaning of Islam is to love and respect one another, not to incite hatred.

When I first heard about Omar’s project I was intrigued to see how he would make this work without imitating other existing queer content out there, but from what I’ve seen Omar wants to add an aspect of futurism into his work, making a statement that this is the future, a tolerant and loving society towards everyone. When I wake up in the morning I don’t want to feel a heavy heart filled with anxiety and depression, living in constant fear of my Lord, worried that I won’t be truly loved, it’ll take some time but rather than being so hesitant towards each other this community needs to stand strong and support eachother, all of our brothers and sisters, of all colours, ethnicities, genders and sexualities, ensuring that we have a bright and positive future ahead of us.

@mossymugler - For the longest time I thought I had to be either Queer or Palestinian but never both at the same time. My mind couldn’t make the connection that Queerness alongside my Palestinian identity is a driving force in the face of liberation from Zionism. This I come to now realize, is a form of colonial control. As I look into the historical archives of the Arab and Muslim world I see how sexuality and gender fluidity were never an issue of conflict. It was completely normal and even celebrated to be queer.

The ottoman empire wrote legislation on this in 1858 recognizing queerness but it was only after British mandate law was instated in 1937, that it was criminalized and homophobic attitudes sprung thereafter. I blamed my “Muslim parents” or “Arab upbringing” for a lot of my self- hate, although that’s somewhat valid cuz it’s my experience, I realize now that they’re also victims of colonial trauma and need help unlearning colonial homophobic behavior. Being Queer and Palestinian has given me the tools to work on collective liberation for my people and I pride myself on my identity now more then ever before.

@metalfemme - As a queer + trans Muslim born in Pakistan and raised in the us post 9/11 and during the war on terror, I grew up feeling as if i had to pick and choose parts of my identity to express at certain times. I’ve always been hesitant about visibility and representation politics but learning about other queer and trans Muslims has helped me come into my own identity over the years.  

As an artist, I feel that creating art has helped me bridge the false logic of dualism, which was built up through western enlightenment discourse and weaponised against queer Muslims via orientalism, capitalism, etc. Through experiencing and partaking in different forms of art, I have learned that I can simply exist within the vastness of myself. Also drawing upon theory and philosophy by scholars like Crenshaw, Marx, and Ahmed has helped me form the language to describe my material condition in this world. What id love to see is my peers putting in work and being critical of the ways

@mstfuh - The hostility I’ve faced oftentimes comes from the moments when I was hiding. It’s when I’ve been invisible, or unseen, that pain was most burdensome. I think these periods of hiding showed me the true colors of my communities and whom to stay away from, or whom I see light within. Being open with who I am and what I believe, surprisingly, hasn’t led to the isolation I anticipated when I was younger. I haven’t left my communities, but some have left me. I’ve carved space out in those hostile places I identified throughout my hiding, because I still derive great value and wisdom from the communities I was raised. And living my truth has taught me to leave parts of my communities that will never love me how I used to admire them. I think this is what it means to live your truth and be open. Living in honesty  is not only facing the communities that’ve only known you in hiding, but it’s also choosing people and families within those communities that tend for you the ways you long for. It’s about holding firm space in a world that doesn’t want me to exist through a community that has existed alongside me for as long as I can remember.

@arabqueer - I never considered being gay a problem or a personal issue until people made me feel uncomfortable and insure about my same-sex desires. I developed attractions towards men around the age of 9, but it’s not until the age of 11 that I began to feel insecure about it. Why? Because around 11 I became more aware of people’s repulsiveness towards homosexuality. I wasn’t sure yet of the reasons, but I just knew that a lot more people than I imagined didn’t like or accept boys who are attracted to boys.

But it’s also the heteronormativity that played a huge impact on my insecurity: the lack of queer/gay representation in every aspect of society made me feel like an outsider. I was already getting teased on towards the end of primary school, but It only got worse when I left primary school and entered secondary school. For three years in a row after primary school I was bullied almost every single day for my femininity and my homosexuality. The strange thing is that I wasn’t actually out yet, but students just suspected I was gay because of my femininity. The secondary school i went was attended by many immigrant/brown students. There was another gay in the school but he was white. No one ever bullied him, at least not like me. For some reasons, being gay was worse for me bc I was brown. Almost like homosexuality/queerness is a western/white phenomenon. During those three years of bullying, I turned to my family to seek refuge from the hate I was getting at school but I realised at first that I was not gonna get any support from my relatives either. It was quickly made clear to me by my relatives that my homo desires were not compatible with my ethnic culture, with Islam, with my country of origin, and with my family’s values. This is an issue we face as Muslim/brown queers: we are told by our ethnic community that our sexuality isn’t compatible with our culture or with Islam, we are judged too “westernised” but when we turn to the western gay community we are judged too “ethnic” and we are asked to give up on our culture/religion bc it is deemed, again, incompatible with LBGTQ rights. Therefore, we feel like a misfit in both sides which leads to a struggle in identity. And so we, as brown/Muslim queers, face rejection by both our own ethnic community and the west’s white gay community. And so I isolated myself until i took the courage to come out to my mother. I had to accept my sexuality first before I could come out to my own mother. It was hard at first. She wasn’t evil towards me. She continued to give me all the love I deserved. But her hostility and dislike of my sexuality didn’t stem from hate or homophobia, it stemmed from fear. The fear that her son could be hurt or rejected for his desires. I did have to come out to my mother a second time, about 4 years after I first came out to her, in order to make sure we were on the same page. So in the end, it took my mom some time to fully accept the reality and she has definitely learned a lot from her son’s sexuality. In exchange, my mom taught me that Islam doesn’t speak of homosexuality. And so my mom brought me back to Islam when I was leaving it.

It’s now been approximately a decade since I first experienced same-sex attractions and it’s been an incredible journey. 7 years ago when I was bullied I would have never taught that I’d be where I am right now, comfortable with both my sexuality and my religion. I now stand up against any homophobe. But it required from me a lot of research about homosexuality in Islam and research about human sexuality thru cultures and time, it required me to accept myself first before I could expect anyone to accept me, it required me to challenge heteronormativity and masculinity vs femininity in my brain, it required me to grow thicker skin which I was able to get  through those years of bullying, it required me to analyse and understand homophobes and why they are homophobic, it required me to move to my country of origin Morocco for two years (a Muslim nation that criminalises homosexuality) to finish high school. It required me all these things, critical and independent thinking, and more in order to be where I am right now embracing my queerness.

For brown and Muslim queers in the west I have feeling it will get better than it already is. I feel There’s more inclusivity and more unity as I see brown and Muslim queers engaging in conversations and taking the necessary actions to gain more representation both in the broader society and within the LGBTQ community itself. I see more brown and Muslim artists that are open about their sexuality, spaces such as clubs and even mosques that bring together brown queers. However there is still some work to be done. I still see a lot of toxic and racist orientalism coming from white gays and the wester media doesn’t publicly speak much of the persecution and oppression queers face in the non western world. But overall, in te west, we are on the right path.

In the non-western world there has been very little improvement. India and Angola are the only two countries who have recently decriminalised homosexuality. In Turkey the LGBTQ pride has been canceled for over 5 years in row now. I follow a page on Instagram which documents stories of LGBTQ individuals in the non-world and the persecution they face and it’s horrible. Shocking. There is still a lot of work to do for the liberation of brown and Muslim queers in the non-western world. For the situation to get better it will take time and a lot of effort. I’ve lived and studied in Morocco for over two years. I was able to interact with homophobes there and I know how they think and why. First the problem comes from the state, which mixes politics and religion. That’s a problem because as soon as you implement religion in the nation’s laws you are directly and inevitably imposing religious beliefs on an entire population. This blocks the way for freedom as you are already forcing a population to submit to a specific religion by its laws. A society cannot be free when it is being imposed laws from a specific religion. So in order for us to move forward, the mentalities must change. To change the mentalities, religion and state must be separate and that’s a first step. Second, education. People are uneducated about topics that cover human sexuality, gender, and identity because those topics are always considered taboo in a country ruled by religious laws. People are brainwashed with heteronormativity and ideas of masculinity vs femininity in countries like Morocco. I heard a lot of dumb and ignorant comments while I was in Morocco. For instance I’ve heard too many times people say that homosexuality will bring aids. This is pure ignorance and it’s part of the problem. Students and children are not taught in schools about sexuality and gender. They are not taught to question. Why is it that girls must act a certain way and boys a certain way? Why some colours are considered “feminine” and some “masculine”? If they could ask themselves these questions and do the research people would realise those are just social constructs which can be deconstructed. So we must find a way to deconstruct the social constructs that are already implemented in Muslim/brown nations and challenge them.  

People are also not educated about their past. They don’t have much knowledge about the precolonial era. They don’t know that the west’s colonisation is the cause of all this heteronormativity and gender roles nonsense in the non-western world. People also don’t know the influence that Wahhabism has had on all this conservatism in the Islamic world as well as the misinterpretation and mistranslation of the Quran’s verses, which serves as a justification against LGBTQ people. India and Pakistan were one of the most sexually diverse societies before colonisation. The anti-gay laws in India and Pakistan were implemented by the British and people don’t know that, they don’t know their history before colonisation and the negative impacts that colonisation has had on sexuality and heteronormativity in colonial lands. The Ottoman Empire, and Islamic caliphate/empire, decriminalised homosexuality in the mid 19th century before most western nations. They even had homoerotic paintings. Just like Iran who had a century of homoerotic poetry during the Middle Ages. And I could tell you about a grey number of Muslim emperors who had male lovers instead of females and barely approached women. So I think if people also knew about concepts of sexuality and gender in precolonial era it could challenge today’s heteronormativity and ideas of masculinity vs femininity in the non western world.

@layskeet - Being a queer muslim arab is a conflict in itself, how do all those parts fall together into one being?

I hope that our intersectional identities can one day live in harmony accepted and understood by everyone.

I hope that we can destroy all the internalized hate and discrimination.

I hope that leaving our families for independence or compromising our happiness to meet our families expectations will no longer be the ultimatum.

I hope that we can all be our unapologetic complete self to everyone, anywhere, any time.

I hope that we can decolonize our minds from the colonized idealizations that have been fed to us. Idealizations and concepts that never resonated with our truth, existence, and ancestry.

@jamalozsoy - I haven’t came out to my parents yet. Simply because I don’t feel ready atm. Being gay is a heavy weight to carry in a Muslim household. But also in the society. I live in Paris and I sometimes feel pressured by white people (queer or not) to come out cuz “it’s okay 2 be gay”. This comes from the lack of acknowledgement they have of what it means to grow up gay in a Muslim family specially in the Parisian suburb where taboos are stronger

I think one should always be encouraged to come out (at some point) but it’s important not to rush anyone and to keep in mind that topics such as homosexuality and sexuality in general are very taboos in some communities. For the future I hope that my diaspora sis’ won’t suffer from this double-sided pressure. Only you get to decide when to come out

I’d like to ask for help from our Muslim sisters. They tend to be open-minded when it comes to homosexuality and having gay friends. I want them to share this acceptance with their Muslim boyfriends. Let’s all embrace each other inshallah

Also I think it’s very important that we (diaspora kids) learn more about the dark sides of our parents countries. I think some of us are too busy trying to idealise Arabic countries through arts and traditions without taking in account the difficulties of what it means to live there. And that is not fair to Arab queer individuals dealing with those issues on a daily basis. Let arab queer individuals speak for themselves.

@anwarbougroug - The oppression of the LGBTQI+ community in the Arab world is rooted in insecurity, toxic masculinity, gender roles and religion. I am so proud of my queer Arab friends that use themselves as a medium to push the boundaries on what it means to be queer and Arab. Showing that we’re a community, rather than individuals, not only makes us stronger as a whole, it also empowers non-conforming people to take the next step and be themselves fully. Representation is key in this battle for equality and human rights for the LGBTQI+ community.

@chrisnajimy - I hope more Arabs are able to incorporate queerness into their idea entities and daily lives, and stop isolating sexual or gender identity as an entity separate from what's presented publicly. In order for that to happen we need to feel safer. More progressive legislation has to be passed in the Arab states that still criminalize and punish queerness. Most of all, queer behavior and queer bodies have to be normalized within the culture - including diaspora. Because of so many intersections that come with being Arab and queer (i.e. religion, gender, class, skin tone), it's difficult to speak generally about a "queer Arab experience."

But In my predominantly westernized Lebanese-American family, queerness (of we few that are out) is virtually never discussed. The lack of acknowledgement isn't only discouraging, but harmful to the fight in creating a culture more welcoming/less fearful of queerness. Being visible can literally be dangerous even in states with more progressive legislation worldwide; but it is a fundamental goal to be allowed to comfortably live authentically as both Arab and Queer.

@actuallywill - Technology has turned societies across the globe a little more open and I'm would like to see more young people discussing queer points of view and supporting queer people openly and especially with our religious families/friends in whatever way we think appropriate. As a mixed black Muslim queer living in the west I think community is life changing but it's also really easy to fall into capitalism's trap of being vocal only for cultural capital under the white gaze, rather than meaningfully support our people.